"I write in English [Footnote: The brothers usually corresponded with each other in French; see Chap. II., p. 15.] because I write of serious matters, best to be talked over in our serious mother-tongue. I shall also write very simply, saying exactly what I want you to hear, and that in the plainest manner.
"I have been thinking of late that in talking to you I may have failed to make you comprehend why 'I wanted to make you do things that would pay,' and that if I failed to lead you to look at these things as I do, I must have debased your mind and done you as much harm as any man can do his dearest friend. I will, then, in this memorandum explain my views about you and your future, leaving it to you, my dear brother, to apply or reject them as your judgment prompts, without letting your love for me bias you in favour of my argument.
"I believe that the bent of your mind is not unlike that of mine. My aim in life is to be of the greatest use I can to the world at large, not because that is my duty, but because that is the course which will make my life happiest—i.e., my motives are selfish in the wide and unusual sense of that word. I believe that, on account of my temperament and education, I can be most useful as a statesman and as a writer. I have, therefore, educated myself with a view to getting such power as to make me able at all events to teach men my views, whether or not they follow them. I believe that you and I together would be more than twice as strong as each of us alone; I, therefore, if you are not disinclined, wish to see you acting with me and ever standing by my side in all love and happiness. To do this you must make a name, and you must begin by making a name at Cambridge. If you can go up to college 'a certain future first-class man'—then you can give up classics if you like, and read other and more immediately useful things—be President of the Union, and so on; but you cannot do that from a god-like height unless you are 'a certain first.' So with music, if you play at all, you must play like a whole band of seraphs (as, indeed, you seem in a fair way to do). Of course, it is very easy to say—Music is an art which, if cultivated merely because it will 'pay,' ceases to be either art or music. True! Quite true!! But only true if you insert merely—merely because it will 'pay.' I think (I may be wrong) that it is possible to cultivate it so as to 'pay,' and yet love and reverence it (and yourself in it) as the highest form of art.
"Now I come to riding. I do most earnestly suggest that if you can bring yourself to learn to ride so as to be able to ride an ordinary horse along a road with perfect safety, you should do so. I am clear that you cannot go into the diplomatic service without it. In travel you must ride. If you can bring yourself to it at all, it must be at once.
"Now for my absence. Part of my plan is the writing of serious and grave works, neither of which can be written until I have seen Australia as well as America. I find it, then, a necessity to go there; and I go there now, firstly because I have it within reach, and secondly, because absence from all, and above all from you, dearest, would be worse at any future time than now.
"Keep, however, constantly before you the ultimate doing good or being useful—which is (for I firmly hold the Jesuit doctrine, if it be rightly understood) to justify the means.
"I need hardly say that this talk is for you, and not even for father, nor for Casswell.
"Your devoted friend and brother,
"CHARLES."
"What a prig he was!" is scrawled across the page, as Charles Dilke's judgment on himself, when later the letter fell into his hands.